Self-focusing of femtosecond surface plasmon polaritons

1Blackett Laboratory, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ,
United Kingdom

2Nonlinear Physics Center and Center for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200,
Australia

Abstract

We study the propagation of femtosecond pulses in nonlinear metal-dielectric plasmonic waveguiding structures by employing the finite-difference time-domain numerical method. Self-focusing of plasmon pulses is observed for defocusing Kerr-like nonlinearity of the dielectric medium due to normal dispersion. We compare the nonlinear propagation of plasmon pulses along a single metal-dielectric interface with the propagation within a metal-dielectric-metal slot waveguide and observe that nonlinear effects are more pronounced for the single surface where longer propagation length may compensate for lower field confinement.

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